Tales of War Part 8

Many an Irishman who sails from America for those historic lands knows that the old trees that stand there have their roots far down in soil once richened by Irish blood. When the Boyne was lost and won, and Ireland had lost her King, many an Irishman with all his wealth in a scabbard looked upon exile as his sovereign's court. And so they came to the lands of foreign kings, with nothing to offer for the hospitality that was given them but a sword; and it usually was a sword with which kings were well content. Louis XV had many of them, and was glad to have them at Fontenoy; the Spanish King admitted them to the Golden Fleece; they defended Maria Theresa. Landen in Flanders and Cremona knew them. A volume were needed to tell of all those swords; more than one Muse has remembered them. It was not disloyalty that drove them forth; their King was gone, they followed, the oak was smitten and brown were the leaves of the tree.

But no such mournful metaphor applies to the men who march to-day towards the plains where the "Wild Geese" were driven. They go with no country mourning them, but their whole land cheers them on; they go to the inherited battlefields. And there is this difference in their att.i.tude to kings, that those knightly Irishmen of old, driven homeless over-sea, appeared as exiles suppliant for shelter before the face of the Grand Monarch, and he, no doubt with exquisite French grace, gave back to them all they had lost except what was lost forever, salving so far as he could the injustice suffered by each.

But to-day when might, for its turn, is in the hands of democracies, the men whose fathers built the Statue of Liberty have left their country to bring back an exiled king to his home, and to right what can be righted of the ghastly wrongs of Flanders.

And if men's prayers are heard, as many say, old saints will hear old supplications going up by starlight with a certain wistful, musical intonation that has linked the towns of Limerick and Cork with the fields of Flanders before.

The Movement

For many years Eliphaz Griggs was comparatively silent. Not that he did not talk on all occasions whenever he could find hearers, he did that at great length; but for many years he addressed no public meeting, and was no part of the normal life of the northeast end of Hyde Park or Trafalgar Square. And then one day he was talking in a public house where he had gone to talk on the only subject that was dear to him. He waited, as was his custom, until five or six men were present, and then he began. "Ye're all d.a.m.ned, I'm saying, d.a.m.ned from the day you were born. Your portion is Tophet."

And on that day there happened what had never happened in his experience before. Men used to listen in a tolerant way, and say little over their beer, for that is the English custom; and that would be all. But to-day a man rose up with flas.h.i.+ng eyes and went over to Eliphaz and gripped him by the hand: "They're all d.a.m.ned," said the stranger.

That was the turning point in the life of Eliphaz. Up to that moment he had been a lonely crank, and men thought he was queer; but now there were two of them and he became a Movement. A Movement in England may do what it likes: there was a Movement, before the War, for spoiling tulips in Kew Gardens and breaking church windows; it had its run like the rest.

The name of Eliphaz's new friend was Ezekiel Pim: and they drew up rules for their Movement almost at once; and very soon country inns knew Eliphaz no more. And for some while they missed him where he used to drop in of an evening to tell them they were all d.a.m.ned: and then a man proved one day that the earth was flat, and they all forgot Eliphaz.

But Eliphaz went to Hyde Park and Ezekiel Pim went with him, and there you would see them close to the Marble Arch on any fine Sunday afternoon, preaching their Movement to the people of London. "You are all d.a.m.ned," said Eliphaz. "Your portion shall be d.a.m.nation for everlasting."

"All d.a.m.ned," added Ezekiel.

Eliphaz was the orator. He would picture h.e.l.l to you as it really is.

He made you see pretty much what it will be like to wriggle and turn and squirm, and never escape from burning. But Ezekiel Pim, though he seldom said more than three words, uttered those words with such alarming sincerity and had such a sure conviction s.h.i.+ning in his eyes that searched right in your face as he said them, and his long hair waved so weirdly as his head shot forward when he said "You're all d.a.m.ned," that Ezekiel Pim brought home to you that the vivid descriptions of Eliphaz really applied to you.

People who lead bad lives get their sensibilities hardened. These did not care very much what Eliphaz said. But girls at school, and several governesses, and even some young clergy, were very much affected.

Eliphaz Griggs and Ezekiel Pim seemed to bring h.e.l.l so near to you.

You could almost feel it baking the Marble Arch from two to four on Sundays. And at four o'clock the Surbiton Branch of the International Anarchists used to come along, and Eliphaz Griggs and Ezekiel Pim would pack up their flag and go, for the pitch belonged to the Surbiton people till six; and the crank Movements punctiliously recognize each other's rights. If they fought among themselves, which is quite unthinkable, the police would run them in; it is the one thing that an anarchist in England may never do.

When the War came the two speakers doubled their efforts. The way they looked at it was that here was a counter-attraction taking people's minds off the subject of their own d.a.m.nation just as they had got them to think about it. Eliphaz worked as he had never worked before; he spared n.o.body; but it was still Ezekiel Pim who somehow brought it most home to them.

One fine spring afternoon Eliphaz Griggs was speaking at his usual place and time; he had wound himself up wonderfully. "You are d.a.m.ned," he was saying, "for ever and ever and ever. Your sins have found you out. Your filthy lives will be as fuel round you and shall burn for ever and ever."

"Look here," said a Canadian soldier in the crowd, "we shouldn't allow that in Ottawa."

"What?" asked an English girl.

"Why, telling us we're all d.a.m.ned like that," he said.

"Oh, this is England," she said. "They may all say what they like here."

"You are all d.a.m.ned," said Ezekiel, jerking forward his head and shoulders till his hair flapped out behind. "All, all, all d.a.m.ned."

"I'm d.a.m.ned if I am," said the Canadian soldier.

"Ah," said Ezekiel, and a sly look came into his face.

Eliphaz flamed on. "Your sins are remembered. Satan shall grin at you. He shall heap cinders on you for ever and ever. Woe to you, filthy livers. Woe to you, sinners. h.e.l.l is your portion. There shall be none to grieve for you. You shall dwell in torment for ages. None shall be spared, not one. Woe everlasting... Oh, I beg pardon, gentlemen, I'm sure." For the Pacifists' League had been kept waiting three minutes. It was their turn to-day at four.

Nature's Cad

The claim of Professor Grotius Jan Beek to have discovered, or learned, the language of the greater apes has been demonstrated clearly enough. He is not the original discoverer of the fact that they have what may be said to correspond with a language; nor is he the first man to have lived for some while in the jungle protected by wooden bars, with a view to acquiring some knowledge of the meaning of the various syllables that gorillas appear to utter. If so crude a collection of sounds, amounting to less than a hundred words, if words they are, may be called a language, it may be admitted that the Professor has learned it, as his recent experiments show. What he has not proved is his a.s.sertion that he has actually conversed with a gorilla, or by signs, or grunts, or any means whatever obtained an insight, as he put it, into its mentality, or, as we should put it, its point of view. This Professor Beek claims to have done; and though he gives us a certain plausible corroboration of a kind which makes his story appear likely, it should be borne in mind that it is not of the nature of proof.

The Professor's story is briefly that having acquired this language, which n.o.body that has witnessed his experiments will call in question, he went back to the jungle for a week, living all the time in the ordinary explorer's cage of the Blik pattern. Towards the very end of the week a big male gorilla came by, and the Professor attracted it by the one word "Food." It came, he says, close to the cage, and seemed prepared to talk but became very angry on seeing a man there, and beat the cage and would say nothing. The Professor says that he asked it why it was angry. He admits that he had learned no more than forty words of this language, but believes that there are perhaps thirty more. Much however is expressed, as he says, by mere intonation.

Anger, for instance; and scores of allied words, such as terrible, frightful, kill, whether noun, verb or adjective, are expressed, he says, by a mere growl. Nor is there any word for "Why," but queries are signified by the inflexion of the voice.

When he asked it why it was angry the gorilla said that men killed him, and added a noise that the professor said was evidently meant to allude to guns. The only word used, he says, in this remark of the gorilla's was the word that signified "man." The sentence as understood by the professor amounted to "Man kill me. Guns." But the word "kill" was represented simply by a snarl, "me" by slapping its chest, and "guns" as I have explained was only represented by a noise. The Professor believes that ultimately a word for guns may be evolved out of that noise, but thinks that it will take many centuries, and that if during that time guns should cease to be in use, this stimulus being withdrawn, the word will never be evolved at all, nor of course will it be needed.

The Professor tried, by evincing interest, ignorance, and incredulity, and even indignation, to encourage the gorilla to say more; but to his disappointment, all the more intense after having exchanged that one word of conversation with one of the beasts, the gorilla only repeated what it had said, and beat on the cage again. For half an hour this went on, the Professor showing every sign of sympathy, the gorilla raging and beating upon the cage.

It was half an hour of the most intense excitement to the Professor, during which time he saw the realization of dreams that many considered crazy, glittering as it were within his grasp, and all the while this ridiculous gorilla would do nothing but repeat the mere shred of a sentence and beat the cage with its great hands; and the heat of course was intense. And by the end of the half hour the excitement and the heat seem to have got the better of the Professor's temper, and he waved the disgusting brute angrily away with a gesture that probably was not much less impatient than the gorilla's own. And at that the animal suddenly became voluble. He beat more furiously than ever upon the cage and slipped his great fingers through the bars, trying to reach the Professor, and poured out volumes of ape-chatter.

Why, why did men shoot at him, he asked. He made himself terrible, therefore men ought to love him. That was the whole burden of what the Professor calls its argument. "Me, me terrible," two slaps on the chest and then a growl. "Man love me." And then the emphatic negative word, and the sound that meant guns, and sudden furious rushes at the cage to try to get at the Professor.

The gorilla, Professor Beek explains, evidently admired only strength; whenever he said "I make myself terrible to Man," a sentence he often repeated, he drew himself up and thrust out his huge chest and bared his frightful teeth; and certainly, the Professor says, there was something terribly grand about the menacing brute. "Me terrible," he repeated again and again, "Me terrible. Sky, sun, stars with me. Man love me. Man love me. No?" It meant that all the great forces of nature a.s.sisted him and his terrible teeth, which he gnashed repeatedly, and that therefore man should love him, and he opened his great jaws wide as he said this, showing all the brutal force of them.

There was to my mind a genuine ring in Professor Beek's story, because he was obviously so much more concerned, and really troubled, by the dreadful depravity of this animal's point of view, or mentality as he called it, than he was concerned with whether or not we believed what he had said.

And I mentioned that there was a circ.u.mstance in his story of a plausible and even corroborative nature. It is this. Professor Beek, who noticed at the time a bullet wound in the tip of the gorilla's left ear, by means of which it was luckily identified, put his a.n.a.lysis of its mentality in writing and showed it to several others, before he had any way of accounting for the beast having such a mind.

Long afterwards it was definitely ascertained that this animal had been caught when young on the slopes of Kilimanjaro and trained and even educated, so far as such things are possible, by an eminent German Professor, a persona grata at the Court of Berlin.

The Home of Herr Schnitzelhaaser

The guns in the town of Greinstein were faintly audible. The family of Schnitzelhaaser lived alone there in mourning, an old man and old woman. They never went out or saw any one, for they knew they could not speak as though they did not mourn. They feared that their secret would escape them. They had never cared for the war that the War Lord made. They no longer cared what he did with it. They never read his speeches; they never hung out flags when he ordered flags: they hadn't the heart to.

They had had four sons.

The lonely old couple would go as far as the shop for food. Hunger stalked behind them. They just beat hunger every day, and so saw evening: but there was nothing to spare. Otherwise they did not go out at all. Hunger had been coming slowly nearer of late. They had nothing but the ration, and the ration was growing smaller. They had one pig of their own, but the law said you might not kill it. So the pig was no good to them.

They used to go and look at that pig sometimes when hunger pinched.

But more than that they did not dare to contemplate.

Hunger came nearer and nearer. The war was going to end by the first of July. The War Lord was going to take Paris on this day and that would end the war at once. But then the war was always going to end.

It was going to end in 1914, and their four sons were to have come home when the leaves fell. The War Lord had promised that. And even if it did end, that would not bring their four sons home now. So what did it matter what the War Lord said.

It was thoughts like these that they knew they had to conceal. It was because of thoughts like these that they did not trust themselves to go out and see other people, for they feared that by their looks if by nothing else, or by their silence or perhaps their tears, they might imply a blasphemy against the All Highest. And hunger made one so hasty. What might one not say? And so they stayed indoors.

But now. What would happen now? The War Lord was coming to Greinstein in order to hear the guns. One officer of the staff was to be billeted in their house. And what would happen now?